Child's Play
by EnglandBabe1997
Summary: She'd known him for a long time and they were engaged by the time she turned thirteen. But she never stopped watching him break the other girls hearts. And she could never stop loving him either.
1. Chapter 1

**I've never written for this fandom before, even though I love it - please tell me how I did (read and review) xx**

They'd known each other for a long time. She couldn't have been more than four when they'd met - Robin six, nearly seven. As young children they'd played together, for a while unrestrained by society's expectations and standards.

But when she'd turned ten her governess - strict and stern - had forbidden her from playing with him. Her governess had been trying to do that for years, but her father had agreed with her protests. Until now. Now she was on her way to becoming a grown woman. She had to act like a Lady, not just _know_ how to act like one. All of the time.

It was lonely.

There weren't many other girls her age at Knighton Hall and even less of them were allowed to play with her.

Robin was still allowed to do as he wished. "Thirteen years old and still running around like a child," her governess often said tutting and giving condescending looks as though it was something to be ashamed of. Marian didn't really care - she just wanted to join him.

But even if she had been able to - as a village girl - she wouldn't have been allowed. He started to spend his time frolicking with the village girls, and she watched from her window as her insides burned with jealousy.

When she was thirteen they'd been formally engaged. He hadn't stopped the frolicking, merely made it more discreet. She loved him and loathed him.

By the time he was eighteen he had matured and his sense of honour had developed. He stopped the frolicking and tried to focus his advances on her.

But she was wise to him by now. She'd seen him sweet talk the other girls and she'd seen him break their hearts. She was stronger than that. But when she was with him her guard dropped down - a subconscious action that wasn't her choice. It made her defenceless to his charms but allowed her to see that the young boy she'd once known was still there, hiding inside this handsome and impulsive young man who made her heart race for reasons she couldn't quite explain.

After a year or so she willingly gave him her trust. They were strong alone but together they were invincible - or so she'd thought. She had just turned eighteen when he went to fight in the Crusades, only weeks before their wedding, and they had fought like never before.

They'd screamed and shouted and she'd broken all of the codes of conduct that were demanded of her as a Lady. Her governess would've been horrified. Rightly so.

But it hadn't changed his mind.

She hated him for that, leaving right before they were married - something she'd dreamt of since she was a child, all the emotion she'd buried when they'd become engaged dragged to the surface and boiling.

But she loved him too.

She always had and she knew she'd never stop.


	2. Chapter 2

**I think this will be a three-shot, but that depends on what people think about this second part :)**

Robin was still so much like a child. He looked like one, barely having changed in their time apart. And he acted like one, expecting her to take him back after leaving her to go fight in the Holy Land for some country he'd never been to before and would never go to again, to fight for people he'd never met.

He was certainly as naïve as a child, thinking she would just take him back like that.

She had moved on. Of _course_ she had. Robin had been gone a long time. She couldn't afford to sit at her window waiting for him to come home. She was young lady, but she wouldn't always be. She had to move on - she wanted to move on. Guy of Gisbourne had pursued her for a while now, and she have to be blind to miss it.

She looked in his eyes, at his handsome face which had not changed at all with the years they'd been apart. _He_ still looked barely more than a teenager. The jealousy rushed to the surface, reminding her of all the tumbling he'd done with the village girls when she'd been too young to even know they were engaged.

She knew she herself had aged. Her father told her she only looked more beautiful and the other men seemed to support that idea, the poetry and flowers coming thicker and faster since she had broken off her and Robin's engagement.

Marian hated thinking about it.

She swore she would never be that foolish again, foolish enough to believe that Robin actually loved her. He had left her so easily - that wasn't love. Love was not letting go, despite everything.

He hadn't loved her.

She knew that. But looking at him now, feeling her heart speed up just from looking at him, even after all these years, she knew it would be a struggle to remember that.

When he looked at her with those eyes, like that, she'd never been able to deny him anything, even when she was a child, back before she knew what that meant.

She didn't love him anymore.

She didn't.

Really.

And then Robin threw her that smile and then ran off to save someone, giving her a cheeky grin over his shoulder as he left. Her heart skipped a beat and she restrained the urge to slide to the floor.

Okay. She was still in love with him.

She was working on it.


	3. Chapter 3

**I hope you like this last piece and I'm sorry that it took so long (though not nearly as long as the second chapter did) x Please read and review x**

It took a while for him to see how little, even back in the Holy Land, he'd grown up. You would have thought that fighting and killing in the defence of the King would have led him to grow up.

He hadn't, not at all.

He'd come back expecting everything to be fine, to find his people happy and well-fed, expecting Marian to be able to understand why he'd had to leave and take him back anyway. To forgive him for abandoning her, so close to their wedding day. To forgive him for leaving and not coming back and not being able to explain any of it.

To understand.

None of that had happened.

His people were living under the rule of a tyrant, oppressed and starved, worked to the bone, and executed for petty things. They were tortured and public ally humiliated and condemned for the Sheriff's failure.

They died by the dozen, all of them like rats in the gutter in the minds of the people that killed them.

Marian had seen all of this and had not forgiven him for abandoning his people to go fight in a foreign country. She had seen the pain the people of Locksley had gone through and she had been unable to help, with him in the Holy Land.

She'd had to stand by and do nothing.

She'd never been able to do that, no matter the cost.

If his people had been happy he wouldn't have been able to understand. They would have been thriving, even without his presence - an example of self sufficiency.

But with as subdued and tortured as they were, Robin blamed himself for having left. For believing in the fairytale that was everything will turn out fine if you go. The lie he's told himself, right from when he'd been told that it was only honourable to fight with the King, to leave everything and everyone behind.

His people were not fine.

His relationship with Marian was not fine.

He was _not_ fine.

And he's been a child to ever think it would go differently.

But, with the hope like a child, he dreamed.


End file.
